CERAWEEK-Statoil has room to grow more in North Dakota's Bakken -exec

HOUSTON, March 6 (Reuters) - Statoil ASA, the Norwegian state-controlled oil producer, has plenty of growth opportunities left in North Dakota's Bakken shale formation, an executive said on Tuesday.

"We have quite a lot of running room" in North Dakota, Torgrim Reitan, head of Statoil's U.S. operations, said in an interview on the sidelines of CERAWeek in Houston, one of the world's largest gathering of energy executives.

Oil development has spiked in recent years in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico. Concern has spread about a maturation of operations in North Dakota, the second-largest oil-producing U.S. state where Statoil is one of the largest producers.

The company does not see its North Dakota operations slowing down and it using new technologies and other process improvements to suck more oil from the Bakken, Reitan said.

"We still see a great opportunity in the Bakken," he said. (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by David Gregorio)